There's also this simple little fact: if you were born after February 1985, you have never experienced a month where the global temperature was below the 20th century average. One month proves nothing. One year proves nothing. 332 months in a row? Only an ignorant fool would claim temperatures are not rising when confronted with the near statistical impossibility of that fact.

Journey with me, subby, back to the early 1600s. You remember studying the 1600s, right? It was a great time of science and learning, but it it was also a great time of scientific misunderstanding. The best of times and the worst of times, if you want to cite a book that's about to be a very, very big Christmas movie. If you're into that sort of gay musical thing, I mean. I'm certainly not, but whatever floats your boat.

But anyway, I distract myself. My point is that, back in the 1600s, everybody -- and I do mean everybody, every peasant and every scientist and every priest, every-freakin'-body--believed in something called Heliocentrism. Which basically was the belief that everything rotated around the sun. No, wait, that's the way it really is. It's the belief that everything rotates around the earth.

No, wait, I was right the first time. Heliocentrism is the belief that everything rotates around the sun, but it's not what everybody believed. Everybody believed that second thing I wrote, about stuff orbiting earth. I don't know what they called it. Earth-centrism maybe. Or Terra-centrism, scientists like using the word "Terra" instead of "Earth" because it's Latin and sounds fancier. But, so, everybody believed in Terra-centrism, and then along comes this guy named Galileo, had the gumption, the guts, the stones to stand up to the world and say NO. The universe is HELIOCENTRIC. Everything orbits the SUN, not the other way around!

Well, as you might imagine, people were pissed off. Nobody likes their entire universe being questioned. Galileo (his friends called him Leo) was imprisoned in his own house, which doesn't sound to bad until you realize they didn't have electricity back then. No TV, no radio, no internet. Imagine that. He was imprisoned for years. But he stuck to his guns. And, eventually, everybody realized that he was right, after all. The sun IS at the center of the universe.

So think about it. If you were to take your fancy little pie chart and publish it back in the 1600s, what would it look like? The red sliver, which represents plucky ol' Leo, would barely be there at all. And the massive black chunk would represent everybody else who thought he was wrong. AND HE WASN'T WRONG. So what's that tell?

Remember -- being correct means having the courage to stand up to the world when you know you're in the right. It means being the lone voice in a tempest, the single drop in an ocean. Learn from Leo, who was immortalized centuries later in Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which tells the story of his struggle to shine truth into the world. I find him absolutely inspiring.

Interesting how the vast majority of people that reject the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change are willing to believe claims made in texts that are mellinia old without any skepticism....

Here's a neat little experiment. Go to a nursing home and ask people what their opinion was about, say, civil rights protestors at the time. Were they for 'em, or agin 'em? Astonishingly, virtually everybody who was ever opposed in any way to the movement as a whole has died mysteriously in the meantime.

Sociologists do this kind of thing all the time. Obama polls at +2% on the day before the election, wins by +3%, and then a week later, amazingly, beats Romney by 15% in the "who did you vote for last week" poll. It works the other way, too. If you ask people who were old enough to vote in 1976, virtually none of them voted for Carter. Somebody get the ghost of Gerald Ford on the phone and tell him he's been retroactively elected!

Nobody ever rooted for O.J. Simpson. Penn State Football? Nah, I was never really a fan... I named all my sons "Joe" after Joe Rogan of Newsradio fame. And HELL NO, no American ever said that that Hitler guy was just what Germany needed to get back on its feet and we should let Europe take care of its own petty squabbles this time around.

The funny thing is, the people who do this aren't even really lying. The past just magically changes. And if you say, "well, I have you on film turning fire hoses on civil rights protestors," they'll shrug and say, "maybe I thought they'd appreciate being cooled down. Alabama summers are pretty hot, you know, and we didn't have air conditioning back then. Yes, that's right, I remember it now. They'd just gotten done frolicking with my friendly dogs."

Anyway, this is just a reminder for all the people letting themselves be drawn into arguments on this particular topic. You're not going to get the satisfaction of someone posting "ahh... I guess you're right" in response to your Epic Smackdown of Truth. And you're not even going to get the satisfaction of people coming around over time. They'll always have been there. "B-b-but we had HUGE fights about it!" "No way, man, I was sounding the alarm when you were still driving that gas-guzzling Prius you had. Remember? I voted for Romney, because he was a Republican, and Republicans were the first ones to take anthropogenic climate change seriously. *sigh* If only you'd listened..."

BigBurrito:Endive Wombat: All I am going to add to this is that my understanding about those who question global warming is this (and let's be honest, it is a major sticking point): What is its cause and what, if anything can we do about it?

I believe many people have stopped worrying about the cause, and very, very few holdouts cling to denying its existence.

The consequences of global warming are still very much up for debate, even within the sciences. What happens, when does it happen, and what may change the outcome? Hell, if we have a very large Volcanic eruption the ash will cool the atmosphere. T

I think that is where the former deniers are moving to. Better to debate future consequences, that can be neither proved or disproved. Kind of like conspiracy theories, it has the ability to grab peoples imaginations. That is a good and fun thing and has the benefit of enabling research to proceed without as much political interference.

Well, several hundred years ago, the Earth was warmed (Medieval Warm Period) and cooled (Little Ice Age) with what I think most people will agree as zero influence by humans as we were not contributing much to the total Earth's CO2 output at that point in time.

Again, with what little I have studied, I am more apt to believe that sun spots and other Earthly/Nature based factors contribute 98% of global warming. While I am not denying the fact that we more than likely contribute somewhat to Global Warming...I just suspect that there are other, much larger factors at play that try as we may, we will never be able to overcome and will have almost zero ability to do anything about it.

"In the last 75 years, mankind has consumed and burned more resources than in the entire history of the Earth combined".

The Earth has been around for approximately 4.5 billion years. A lot has happened in that time, certainly. But consider that in a time span of only 75 years, a blink of an eye in comparison with the age of the planet, we have burned more gas, more diesel, clear-cut more forests and polluted more air to travel trillions of miles in planes, cars, trains and buses. And in that same span we have industrialized vast swaths of the planet for the sole purpose of producing stuff.

And there are those that would have us believe that this utterly unprecedented impact to the environment has had no consequence whatsoever.

How many peer reviewed papers did it take for people to accept the genocide of jews during WWII? Or how many for Americans to accept slavery, then propagate gross racial stereotypes after the civil war?

Two things: If you're not a scientist, your opinion doesn't matter, and you will forever be the biatch of those of us who are. Further, if you are a scientist, then as long as you believe you're correct, keep your doubt alive- never stop. Never give in just because of an overwhelming number of peers that disagree. After all, think of all the bright ideas that were shiat on by the non-scientists.

hutchkc:The only time I truly remember global cooling being really raised was nuclear winter, but if that occurred there would be a few other issues to worry about.

There were two legitimate concerns that were tangled up in the media reporting at the time.

One is that geologists had started to realize that some climate changes in the glacial cycle were "abrupt", and this led to the possibility that the next ice age might come faster than expected. But they were still mostly thinking on thousand-year timescales.

The other is that climatologists had noticed that the planet was slightly cooling (which it really was), and atmospheric scientists had started to realize that air pollution (in particular, sulfate aerosols) might be responsible (by reflecting sunlight). If pollution continued to grow exponentially, this could cause a profound cooling. And they were right about this (although not exactly about the magnitude).

The thing is, humans reduced our sulfate emissions, and the human-driven global cooling went away. That is, the "prediction" didn't come to pass because humans did something about it. Somehow, skeptics don't reason by analogy to conclude that if humans clean up our CO2 emissions, the human-driven global warming will go away.

In any case, most scientists at the time thought the greenhouse effect would ultimately be the dominant factor, and the "impending ice age" was mostly a media-driven phenomenon.

Personally, I think the evidence for climate change is overwhelming, and I really thought this video does a good job of discussing it: Climate Change Is Simple: Remix.

However, to this:

FTFA:

Now I know some people will just say that this is due to mainstream scientists suppressing controversy and all that, but let me be succinct: That's bull. Science thrives on dissenting ideas, it grows and learns from them. If there is actual evidence to support an idea, it gets published.

I can only say:

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

/scientist//that's how I thought too///before I became involved in academia////easy example: drug studies

I think it would be stupid to try and say the Earth's climate isn't changing.

The Earth is really old, and it's gone through a wide spectrum of climates. Many of which would make human life impossible, nearly impossible, or just really, really, really damn hard.

The meaningful debate is to what degree human's are impacting it, which actions of ours are contributing to it, what is the cost/benefit ratio to altering our lifestyles/developing new technologies to prevent it. Then it gets harder. In a perfect, fictional world, maybe we'd just achieve a perfect balance with nature and have a 'zero impact' lifestyle. Whatever that means. But a lot of people would die. We can't go 100% green without abandoning a lot of technology. A lot of people would support this - no pesticides or genetically modified crops that yield 8x the food....even though it means lots more starving people. And in our imperfect world, there are lots of *other* problems. At least, potential problems....like overpopulation, poverty, violence, disease, oppression, terrorism, really hard math problems, I mean, there's a lot of 'stuff' we don't know that we spend resources on.

So, it's not enough to say, 'Oh yeah - there is global warming'.

I'm not a scientist and I don't think global warming is a particularly interesting topic; but a lot of what I have researched makes me think a lot of people are f***ing retarded when it comes to the topic. Recycling, especially paper, is a bad thing. Carbon offsets is a retarded thing. Hybrids largely suck. The majority of people I know who claim to be environmentalist against Global Warming are just smug hypocrites. I know it's an anecdote and it's stereotypical, but most of the hybrid owners and recyclists have the largest carbon footprints. 2600 sq ft. house for a family of four with AC and a sprinkler system, four cars between them all, annual family vacation, every iDevice imaginable.....but will include the 'Please think before printing this e-mail' signature and tell me not to throw away paper when I could put it in the recycle bin.

And why do people think the earth is round? It looks flat from my point of view.

The fact is that when you claim that humans can't have enough impact to cause climate change, you're ignoring evidence that has already been presented by scientists. You are asking simplistic questions that scientists have already answered.

I don't know how much humans are responsible for climate change, and I don't know if that really even matters anyway. The fact is, the climate is changing, and I suppose we can sit around and bicker about it, or, more productively, we can maybe try to prepare ourselves for it.

Diogenes:doyner: Interesting how the vast majority of people that reject the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change are willing to believe claims made in texts that are mellinia old without any skepticism....

There is no funding for "Global warming."There is no funding for "Denying global warming."

There IS funding for "What were the temperatures like XXXX years ago?"All you need to do to get that funding is identify a method that will record temperature (tree-rings, ice cores, other proxies, etc). Then you can publish your findings (go through peer review at this point. Then you have to make the data you collect (the raw data) available to the public so that if someone disagrees with you they can go in and see if they can find a fault in your findings.

This is what happened with the Koch funded study. "Climategate" happened climate change deniers jumped on it, the Koch brothers gave funding to one of the scientists that has openly been one of the strongest climate deniers, he went through all of the "Climategate" data and *shocked* determined that yes indeed the world is warmer now. It is not like the climate change scientists are shrouded in mystery. Everything is available to the public (That is mandatory if you are being funded through the government, the data is not yours it is the governments).

SevenizGud:cameroncrazy1984: So, 8,000+ stations for 10 years proves that the globe hasn't been warming for the past 100-150?

Another tard who can't distinguish between "never warmed" and "currently warming".

You take 10 years out of a system that has been proven to not show clear trends for periods less than 30 years and you call other people 'tards'??

This has literally been pointed out to you over a hundred times but you are too stupid to understand ... your sample size is too small to be relevant. It causes your signal to noise ratio to be too low to get a clear trend.

The following animation explains the difference between how you see data and how intelligent people see data:

LOL THIS. Because I'm over 40. I remember in elementary school they taught that science showed we were going to freeze in an ice age caused by pollution. It was scientific fact, at the time.

Be careful that "scientific fact" isn't necessarily what is covered in the popular media, nor what is taught in elementary school. A much better metric would be the state of the literature at the time:

From Peterson et al. 2008. The majority of the literature at the time pointed towards warming, which suggests the impression you got back then might not have been an accurate representation of scientific knowledge at that time.

All that aside, be aware that the cover on the left in the picture you posted is a fake.

M'kay...let me see a pie chart depicting how many studies denying climate change were also denied federal funding vs. studies that sought to confirm it. Because it may very well be that the reason there were only 24 studies denying climate change is that funding was not equally dispersed.

As someone above said, just because you see concensus doesn't mean that you have scientific validity.

In addition, even if you take global warming as a given, there is still no conclusive data to indicate a specific cause, nor is there conclusive data to indicate that it will continue to rise. So until science has something concretely useful to offer on this subject they really shouldn't expect anything but derision and mockery.

The only definitive thing that can be said about the climate is that it will change.

Whether the current cycle of change is caused by humans, or sunspots, or goats, is pretty much irrelevant.

The idea that modifying our actions will allow us to act as some sort of global thermostat is ludicrous.

The earth has been hotter, and the earth has been colder. It will be hotter again, and colder again.

Instead of arguing about the effects that these changes will have - some inevitable, some possibly not inevitable - I think we as a species are far better off trying to figure out how to live in a changing world. Unfortunately this means undoing things already done, like unchecked population growth, fossil fuel dependence, building cities below sea level.

While it's possible that the earth is warming as a direct result of man, there's no proof that the miles will come off just by putting the car on blocks in reverse. We had better figure out how to live with climate change rather than try to control climate change.

Lucky LaRue:All that shows is scientist are worse than the average population when it comes to group-think.

Yeah. It's even worse among professional geographers. 100% of them think the Earth is round. Sheep.

... and in summary: If scientists don't agree on global warming, then global warming is wrong. If scientists do agree on global warming, they're delusional group-thinkers, then global warming is wrong. Either way, global warming is wrong, so it hardly matters what scientists think. Right?

Endive Wombat:Well, several hundred years ago, the Earth was warmed (Medieval Warm Period) and cooled (Little Ice Age) with what I think most people will agree as zero influence by humans as we were not contributing much to the total Earth's CO2 output at that point in time.

Again, with what little I have studied, I am more apt to believe that sun spots and other Earthly/Nature based factors contribute 98% of global warming. While I am not denying the fact that we more than likely contribute somewhat to Global Warming...I just suspect that there are other, much larger factors at play that try as we may, we will never be able to overcome and will have almost zero ability to do anything about it.

Bolded words are problematic in science.

You only raised one question that can be tested, Solar Activity.

Solar activity has been less than average over the past decade. Yet we are still warming. What conclusion can we draw?

Your right that there is cycle to warming and cooling of the earth. Your most likely correct that it probably does not matter if it is human caused or not. In the end market forces will determine what happens and how.

SlothB77:You won't get funding from the USA to write papers arguing against global warming, no matter how sound your science is. And if you need funding ...

Actually, if your science is sound and you have a pertinent test, you would most likely receive funding.

Most basic science research is funded by the NSF. The NSF uses peer reviews to determine allocation of funding. You send a grant request in, then that request is submitted with other grant requests to anonymous scientists in your discipline. Those anonymous scientists determine which grants are more deserving of the money. Recommendations are made and eventually the funds are rewarded. Usually to the most deserving project.

More research to prove that global warming exists is a rather low priority for funding. The consensus already exists that it does. A research area that might question that result is much more compelling to a reviewer than one that reinforces the current understanding.

The question becomes, what area of science has the best potential to disprove global warming.

Mangoose:While that may be true of science, it is not always true of scientists.

The Scientist is not so important to Science. Science moves forward. Sometimes a Scientist can move Science forward faster (Newton, Einstein, many others) but it moves regardless of the Scientist. It builds slowly, sometimes, rarely, very quickly.

tobcc:Dont get me wrong, I think we as humans have changed the climate, but.. we are looking at data from ~100 years, the world is 6 billion years old (or 4000 if that is your thing). It is still a really small sample size.

I have a clock that is 80 years old, but I don't need to observe it for a decade to determine its periodicity and any variations thereof.

GAT_00:There's also this simple little fact: if you were born after February 1985, you have never experienced a month where the global temperature was below the 20th century average. One month proves nothing. One year proves nothing. 332 months in a row? Only an ignorant fool would claim temperatures are not rising when confronted with the near statistical impossibility of that fact.

Dont get me wrong, I think we as humans have changed the climate, but.. we are looking at data from ~100 years, the world is 6 billion years old (or 4000 if that is your thing). It is still a really small sample size.

//dont worry, I think we need to get off fosell fuels, and have clean air too/// am a hippy (not really a dirty one though)

Baryogenesis:Frederick: Baryogenesis: Frederick: whidbey: Frederick: Do you have trouble with reading comprehension?

You do. You keep using words like "debatable." Did you have trouble reading TFA? Maybe you should eye the pie chart posted earlier. My favorite flavor. Cherry red.

I used "debatable" exactly one time. You ignored my question entirely. I dont think you even understand what I've written. Are you suggesting there is a pie chart with the level of influence humans have had on climate change? Because I find that doubtful.

Not a pie chart

Combinations of Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings in Twentieth-Century ClimateFrom that link:

[chriscolose.files.wordpress.com image 490x391]

Here's another way to put it:[cdn.greenoptions.com image 594x459]

Here's another way to put it: "It is thus extremely likely (>95% probability) that the greenhouse gas induced warming since the mid-twentieth century was larger than the observed rise in global average temperatures, and extremely likely that anthropogenic forcings were by far the dominant cause of warming. The natural forcing contribution since 1950 is near zero."

And again for the visual learners (black line is the observed temperature):

[www.skepticalscience.com image 850x309]

Those guesses illustrated in the graphs are absolutely debatable. And they are by definition guesses. The best you can say is "educated guesses". If you are unwilling to acknowledge that the science of determining AGW is based on guessing then you are the one who does not understand scientific method.

Time will tell how accurate the model is; not insistence.

Yeah, ok dude. All those peer reviewed papers and the scientific method in general are just people guessing. That's how scientists developed computers too.

So, your comprehension lets you believe all those peer reviewed papers specifically address and support your individual claim about AGW? You dont for a second suppose the majority of those papers are in reference to climate change in general? How convenient for you.....

Tatterdemalian:whidbey: Frederick: Do you have trouble with reading comprehension?

You do. You keep using words like "debatable." Did you have trouble reading TFA? Maybe you should eye the pie chart posted earlier. My favorite flavor. Cherry red.

1. The Church science of AGW does not debate those who are inferior to it. endlessly repeat long debunked talking points.2. Anyone who disagrees with any of the tenets of the Church of AGW are, by definition, inferior. science is welcome to challenge it. When their challenges are shown to be idiotic propaganda they will be mocked.3. Therefore, the tenets of the Church of AGW are, by definition, not debatable. uneducated idiots are unable to defent their positions and the the stupidity of their arguments is pointed out every time they regurgitate them.

/this exercise in circular logic has been brought to you by the anti-science movement of America//not adapted ... they never adapt

You do. You keep using words like "debatable." Did you have trouble reading TFA? Maybe you should eye the pie chart posted earlier. My favorite flavor. Cherry red.

1. The Church of AGW does not debate those who are inferior to it.2. Anyone who disagrees with any of the tenets of the Church of AGW are, by definition, inferior.3. Therefore, the tenets of the Church of AGW are, by definition, not debatable.

/this exercise in circular logic has been brought to you by Grand Inquisitor Torquemada and the Roman Catholic Church//adapted to modern times, of course

Bell-fan:But I think you miss my point....It's not climate change I have issue with... I'm reasonably certain it's ongoing and anyone with sense can see it.

It's the whole human caused aspect I'm dubious of. That we're in it is clear... but laying it all at man's feet... I'm not so sure. The world's coming out of an ice age... that means it's gotta warm up.. and we don't know how fast that actually happens since we've never lived through one as a race and documented it.

And again, back to where I started, you are simply ignoring or unaware of the evidence concerning human attribution.

doubled99:I'm not saying what we should do. Or what is smart or right.I'm simply saying that is the way it is.People seem to want some sort of mass, global conference where all world leaders publicly state that global warming is real, it's happening now, and we all need to come up with a new, more responsible way to live, eschewing fossil fuels for new, safer forms of energy, and changing our perspectives on this planet and our role on it.

This will never happen. We like our lives the way they are. We like driving our cars with their shiatty exhaust. We like wasting recources for our entertainment and comfort. Even with acceptance of the climate change as fact, then what? Nothing.We will simply adapt to whatever new climate changes come. With as little change to our current lives as possible.

/btw, Asimov is a shiatty writer

I am well aware of what you are saying and I am saying you are wrong.

The lie that deniers like to push is that all the "greenies" want to implement 'economy destroying' plans. While it is true that not all proposals are completely reasonable, I do not support Koyoto for example, this does not mean that there are not many plans, large and small, that can work.

The fact is that there are plenty of countries that have become technological leaders in clean energy and have profitable industries in the field. Industries that we have missed out on in North America because of denier propaganda. What could have been money and jobs here are now money and jobs in Europe and Asia.

Most individuals that I know have much smaller carbon footprints than they did even 10 years ago. The improved efficiencies on cars and appliances alone have people getting greener simply when they replace their old stuff with new.

The fact is that people are already making significant differences without any pain at all. Younger generations are already growing up with much greener mind-sets and will push this further. Cleaner air and reduced dependency on middle east oil are good things that everyone should be moving towards ... but they deniers scream their lies and strawmen because they've bought into the propaganda that their is still doubt.

spmkk:Basically, in order to flatline global CO2 emissions by 2050, the developed world would have to cut output to nearly ZERO in 38 years. [...]

That's to stabilize at 2 degrees C. I agree, that's no longer a realistic goal, even though it might be a necessary goal to avoid some bad impacts. However, there is still a huge gap between 2 C stabilization and business-as-usual where policy can work.

I don't entirely agree that the developed countries have to roll over and die because the developing countries won't do anything. Even China is realizing their current growth curve is environmentally destroying their country; they've written a small carbon tax into their next 5-year plan. The standing problem is that nobody really wants to move first; they want to wait to the last possible minute for fear that someone else will reap the advantages. The U.S.'s recalcitrance has historically been a big obstacle to that, as an excuse. It would be tough, but I wouldn't rule out e.g. some modest bilateral U.S.-China agreement that grows into something bigger. (Other people are talking about a border tax adjustment, which could also work, but maybe set off a trade war.) Also, part of the problem with developing countries is that alternatives aren't yet cheap enough, but part of the reason why alternatives aren't yet cheap enough is because the artificially low price of fossil fuels prevents us from deploying enough to exploit economies of scale and learning-by-doing. (China is ironically doing better at this than most countries ...) Developed countries improving their technology, and having an economic incentive to do so, in turn gives other countries more of an incentive to adopt them.

omeganuepsilon:Ambitwistor: Who is dismissing? Who said anything about dismissing?

turnerdude69

Then reply to him with the whole "dismissing" argument, not me.

If you ask me to clarify what I was talking about, and what I was talking about was a response to someone else, then don't get pissed off at me, dumbass.When I quoted you, I quoted a specific statement about your personal and creative rules that skeptics must live by, or some such. That part that I quoted was patently ridiculous, and really, the only point I'm discussing with you as such.

Sorry, you don't get to wear the "skeptic" tag just by being ignorant. I understand that accountants, garbage men, etc. don't have scientific qualifications. They also aren't qualified to judge the correctness of a body of science. Skepticism can't be based on pure ignorance; then it's just prejudice masquerading as skepticism.

Pretending as if I'm some other poster you have a grudge against and attributing his arguments to me will win you no points.

I didn't attribute his arguments to you. YOU attributed my responses to you. You asked me about my position on skepticism, I told you it wasn't valid when you're dismissing fields of science. I never brought YOU into it.

Welcome to Fark! Anything you post can be quoted by others. It's the reason we're here, discussion with random people at random times. If you want privacy, I suggest you go elsewhere.

I didn't ask for privacy, I asked that you pay attention to what's being discussed and not try to turn it into a discussion about your personal beliefs when it's not.

DustBunny:whizbangthedirtfarmer: My neocon friend, who, at times, I barely resist slapping in the back of the head, is convinced that scientists are making up global warming so they can get their sweet, sweet hands on some of that grant money. He apparently believes that grant money comes in massive blocks and that a scientist uses it not for research, but to buy himself nice things. He told me once that he wanted to be a scientist so he could use the grant money to buy himself a bigger house.

I have a denier at my work who reckons he's got a friend who got a research grant of $40k to do something non-climate related (but it's totally an example of the grants rort that they're all in on!).

I asked if the friend was a student, he is. I asked if he had any other income, he did not. I asked how long the research project was for, it was 2 years.

I then asked for clarification purposes if that meant that his income was to be 20k per year for essentially a full time job, and that any research costs would have to also come out of that. It appeared that this was the case. I then asked the denier (a network engineer on about 75k p/a) if he really thought that his friend was living some kind of government funded high life? He was less confident about the grants gravy train after that.....

/this guy also went on a rant about the IPCC totally being an international conspiracy to steal money from the west, as was evidenced by the billions of dollars in it's budget...he made the mistake of going on this rant in front of me with an internet connection./I think it took about 1 minute to work out their budget comes to a few million per year. Pretty small potatoes for the work they're trying to do.

Yep. During my brief time as a grant writer, I was astounded by just how little some of these scientists are paid ... they MIGHT get a grant for 50k for 2 years, and then they have to document every single iota of procedure and also take any additional supplies out of that. There were some pretty hardcore warnings in some of the grant apps about abuse of funds and how you would never find work in this country again, etc.

2) The article does not support the claim that scientists believed we were headed for another ice age. (See also: This video explaining what was going on back then.)

3) Aerosols were recognized as a potentially major problem and were the linchpin of many global cooling scenarios. Laws and regulations were passed to reduce anthropogenic aerosols. They were effective to the point that the possibility of a cooling scenario has been greatly diminished. See also: Ozone depletion.=Smidge=

A few points that should be brought up. First, that changes in the past had nothing to do with humans does not mean that we as humans cannot also make changes. The comparison that gets bandied about here is that one can still commit arson even though naturally-set forest fires exist. Changes due to other factors are not mutually exclusive with anthropogenic ones.

The other point is to note that while what you're posting represents a lot of change, also note that it's also over a very, very long period of time. Keep in mind that when we talk about the problems with climate change, we're worried about the impact it will have in the next few centuries to the biophysical systems on which we are currently adapted to. Again, that changes have happened in the past does not mean that current changes don't exist, aren't a problem, or cannot be caused in part by humans.

Okay, lets pretend for a second that this isn't a horribly politicized issue that is wrapped up in identity politics.

There are a couple of relevant questions:

1) Is the earth warming (when looking at a trend over millions of years)?2) If yes, would the earth be warming (anyway) if not for humans?3) If yes, is the "human contribution" substantially significant to the overall warming effect?4) If yes, do we have the ability to mitigate the "human contribution" (at this time in our civilization) without causing human suffering and misery?5) If yes, do we have the ability to engineer our environment without making matters worse (there are a couple of scientific proposals that involve reflectants, and so forth)6) And before we go through all this, are we positive that global warming is necessarily detrimental to our habitat?

SevenizGud:HighZoolander: You're like the guy standing in front of his house as it burns down and thinks "my back is cold, I should go inside and get my jacket

Actually, I'm more like the guy who posts a graphic from NASA showing no warming from 2002-2012, and then, when some tard comes along and suggests that I changed from HADCRUT3 from 1997 (not 1998 like you graphic-reading-impaired dolts keep saying) to 2002 GISS because the HADCRUT3 data for the last 15 years like I had been posting no longer works, I post the last 15 years of HADCRUT3 data:

omeganuepsilon:brantgoose: Funny thing: when you do this, removing the anthropogenic factors such as fossil fuel burning, deforestation, agriculture, land use, cities, concrete making, etc., the model fails to model the current data on climate change using only natural causes

www.scotese.com

Do the models account for that? That's a LOT of change that has nothing to do with humans. I'm just asking. The best anyone can come up with is dismissing it out of hand and derision when a graph like that appears. "It's totally, like, irrelevant, man. Take a hit on this and chill out."We just had a cold spell that history shows us is usually temporary in the grand scheme of things, and sliding out of that can go rapidly or take a while, or jag up and down over long periods of time(as it has during the latest cooling trend).

A few points that should be brought up. First, that changes in the past had nothing to do with humans does not mean that we as humans cannot also make changes. The comparison that gets bandied about here is that one can still commit arson even though naturally-set forest fires exist. Changes due to other factors are not mutually exclusive with anthropogenic ones.

The other point is to note that while what you're posting represents a lot of change, also note that it's also over a very, very long period of time. Keep in mind that when we talk about the problems with climate change, we're worried about the impact it will have in the next few centuries to the biophysical systems on which we are currently adapted to. Again, that changes have happened in the past does not mean that current changes don't exist, aren't a problem, or cannot be caused in part by humans.

m00:What's more interesting than what is causing global warming, is what caused global cooling from the Eocene. Within a couple dozen million years, we went from alligators in the north pole to the "ice house" climate we had today. Must have been man made, right?

Oh gee, another Farker who thinks that it's insightful to point out that the climate has changed in the past. I think that makes a couple dozen in this thread alone.

Interestingly, by the way, the Eocene hyperthermals provide some of the best paleo evidence for the warming power of a large injection of greenhouse gases.

But it's insane to think of the earth as somehow static, and that we're disrupting this careful balance of nature.

Nobody thinks the climate is static. If the Earth were going to warm (or cool) by several degrees in the next century due to natural causes, people would be equally concerned and would also be looking at ways to prevent it. (Of course, the proposed solutions would differ depending on the nature of the cause.)

spmkk:It's because people justifiably question the value of trying to solve an environmental problem of uncertain and greatly hyperbolized consequences by creating a series of definitively catastrophic (but questionably effective) economic ones in its place.

Funny, actual economists don't agree about the "definitively catastrophic" part. In fact, they were the ones who recommended carbon pricing as a policy instrument. What's also funny is how people froth at the mouth at how "hyperbolized" global warming is, but never question how hyperbolized is the supposed certain economic doom that any conceivable climate mitigation policy would bring.

Uhm, no goalposts were moved. The same HADCRUT3 analysis that I showed previously still holds exactly as it did before.

The only difference is the woodfortrees graphics generator is down because the website is now defunct.

But please, do pretend that the data is now different, and suggest ulterior motive instead of, you know, knowing what the fark you are talking about.

You lying piece of shiat. For months you posted a graph that started in 1998, and went on and on about 'no warming for 15 years'. And now you post a graph that starts in 2002, and go on and on about 'no warming for 10+ years' and you have the balls to say that those two are exactly the same thing?*

I know you're trolling, because nobody could possibly be as utterly stupid as that makes you look.

I mean, unless you're just siting in a high chair somewhere drooling all over yourself, and someone typed this for you through facilitated communication. Someone who resents having to care for your dumb ass and wants everyone to point and laugh at you so they don't feel quite as miserable in your presence.

*At least, they are both wrong in exactly the same way, but don't let that stop you, I guess

I want to be impressed. I want to see scientists that set out to prove that human impact could be negligible, not because he's paid to, or because it would seriously MAKE his career, but because of what he sees in the broad data. I want to see that study. I want to see that guy see the facts in detail, and then be like, "Well, maybe there's something here".

Are you aware that if one removes the stations installed since the 1980s from the data, the warmest period in the USA is in the 1930s and not today? While that is not world wide, it implies something significant.

Why remove any data? You can build it into the model. Boobies.

You could, but the scientists at the CRU did not. You really are a tool.

And....Boobies to you too..

I have spent enough time dealing with a moron like you pretending to know something. Consider yourself and your boobies ignored. You are obviously an idiot.

Some people ignore trolls.Some people ignore assholes.chuckufarlie ignores facts.

No, the atmosphere absorbs radiation emitted by the Earth. But, upon being absorbed, the radiation has ceased to exist by having been transformed into the kinetic and potential energy of the molecules. The atmosphere cannot be said to have succeeded in trapping something that has ceased to exist.

Are you aware that if one removes the stations installed since the 1980s from the data, the warmest period in the USA is in the 1930s and not today? While that is not world wide, it implies something significant.

Why remove any data? You can build it into the model. Boobies.

You could, but the scientists at the CRU did not. You really are a tool.

And....Boobies to you too..

I have spent enough time dealing with a moron like you pretending to know something. Consider yourself and your boobies ignored. You are obviously an idiot.

The effect of urban heating on estimates of global average land surfacetemperature is studied by applying an urban-rural classification based onMODIS satellite data to the Berkeley Earth temperature dataset compilation of36, 869 sites from 15 different publicly available sources. We compare thedistribution of linear temperature trends for these sites to the distribution for arural subset of 15, 594 sites chosen to be distant from all MODIS-identifiedurban areas. While the trend distributions are broad, with one-third of thestations in the US and worldwide having a negative trend, both distributionsshow significant warming. Time series of the Earth's average landtemperature are estimated using the Berkeley Earth methodology applied tothe full dataset and the rural subset; the difference of these is consistent withno urban heating effect over the period 1950 to 2010, with a slope of -0.10 +-0.24 / 100yr (95% confidence).

omeganuepsilon:Ambitwistor: A real skeptic would examine the evidence and the body of existing knowledge.

No. A real skeptic may state doubts, but is not committed to getting a degree in the sciences needed to be convinced.

If you're going to dismiss an entire field of science by default, without knowing anything about it, and you're not willing to inform yourself, then you're not a real skeptic. You're just being contrary.

If you're an accountant, garbage man, medical doctor, whatever, you're allowed to be a skeptic that does not have the time nor the means to really study the details.

If you don't know anything, your "skepticism" isn't based on anything except your own prejudices. So what is your basis of dismissing an entire field of science?

For example, what are your professional credentials that we should take your analysis of all of the facts as the only possible outcome?

I'm not talking about my analysis, I'm talking about the scientific community's analysis, that people don't know anything about yet still feel qualified to dismiss.

jso2897:Seriously: we have been to the moon, can split atoms, and can carry the Smithsonian Archives in one hand. Should we really be making most of our energy by digging shiat up and burning it, like cavemen?Seriously.

I think the funnier thing is that people have no problem accepting the fact that scientists have managed to send us to the moon, split the atom and shrink the entire Smithsonian archive into the palm of a hand, but if it's snowing on their front lawn they balk at the notion that a couple hundreds scientists can properly read some thermometers. If these idiots think global warming isn't happening because it still snows at their house why don't they think the moon landing was a hoax because of the new moon phase?

I don't know if climate change deniers are the dumbest people on Earth, but if they're not, they're pretty damn close.

Hopefully soon it will be warm enough to RE-settle Greenland. Just as it was over a thousand years ago. The winery owners in England will be particularly happy.Global cooling and warming has been happening far longer than man has been around. Just as the next ice age was coming forty years ago AGW is a tactic used to gain power and money.

Denying Climate change is about as stupid as denying that the sun rises.

That said. I'm pretty damn dubious about the Humancentric part of it. But hey, I keep an open mind.

The problem I have with this "if it's group think it must be RIGHT" mentality.

To whit, I fall back on how the anthropological community celebrated Margaret Mead and how everyone that disagreed with her was ostracized as an unscientific wacko.

If you didn't agree with her... you were labeled a kook and a fool... in much the way that scientists today seem super eager to do to anyone that doesn't agree with human caused climate change.

On Margaret Mead's "Coming of Age in Samoa", Dr. Martin Orans, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, opens his book "Not Even Wrong" (Harvard University Press, 1983), thusly;

"Occasionally a message carried by the mediafinds an audience so eager to receive it that itis willing to suspend all critical judgment andadopt the message as its own. So it was withMargaret Mead's celebrated 'Coming of Age inSamoa.'"

That right there pretty much sums up the same thing I notice about Climate change.That we have this overly receptive audience that just wants to lap up the idea that humans are the be all and end all of the climate change issue and that people are suspending critical judgement.

Even today ... after her work was proven to be bunk... and that the girls she interviewed for her Saoma work admitted they'd fed her a pack of lies because they simply told her what she wanted to hear... even today there are still people in the anthropological community that continue to teach her findings as gospel truth.

Scientific groups and people are made up of human beings, and human beings have a history of playing favorites with pet theories and ignoring evidence unless it fits their agenda.

So I'm skeptical

Your problem is that the humanocentric (or anthropogenic, if you will) part of it isn't based on 'group think'. It's based on evidence. Evidence that you appear to have ignored (or you wouldn't think the claim was based on group think and a suspension of critical judgment).

I'm still looking for the "hundreds of thousands" of climate change refuges the climate change alarmists said we would have by 2010.

I'm also still perplexed that we have had snow as recently as... This year. Since climate change alarmists said we would have none by this time.

I noticed recently that people were once again bemoaning the fact that the United States didn't sign on board the "Screw The United States" treaty more commonly known as the Kyoto Protocols. All the smartest smart people in the world got together to come up with a plan to help global warming... Then exempted "developing" countries from it resulting in potentially trillions of dollars in economic cost, particularly to the United States... All to slow down global warming by a fraction of a fraction of a degree.

I mean its almost like they said to themselves "Let's come up with a plan that will do basically nothing what so ever to stop the problem we're 'concerned' about but will hamstring the United States and the Western world economically"

I mean its like they had another agenda or something not related to global warming.

Again, ha. Now, back to the discussion, please tell the world why past data is unsuitable for climate models, by stating how the data fundamentally poisons the models, and how this data's uncertainty can never be built in.

Hint: see the graphs on this page and explain how the uncertainty in early data will compromise the model.

Modeling is what you do when you want to see if going on with real experimentation is worthwhile. It is not proof of anything but proof of concept. If you want to trash the world economy over that, go ahead.

Your ignorance is showing again. If you cannot bother to even so much as open Wikipedia on the subject of data modeling, let alone climate modeling, then what weight should anyone give your still unfounded concerns?

Proxies that have a margin of error that is greater than the actual change of temperature makes for bad science.

And this cannot be introduced into the models because? Again, do your homework.

Why do you pretend to be some sort of a scientist when you ask so many stupid questions. You compound that stupidity by referring to wikipedia.

I know what modeling is and your remarks show that you do not.

Let me walk you through this little problem with the data. According to the "scientists" the temperatures starting rising in the 1850s. How can they make that statement when the margin of data prior to 1850 is larger than the actual change since then? Do you not see a problem here?

These "scientists" tell us that we are experiencing higher temperatures now than any time in recorded history. What they fail to tell us is that recorded history really only goes back to the 1980s because that is when most of the recording stations were installed. What they do not tell us is that the area around lots of those stations has changed drastically in the years since they were installed and that the temperature would naturally increase because of that change.

Are you aware that if one removes the stations installed since the 1980s from the data, the warmest period in the USA is in the 1930s and not today? While that is not world wide, it implies something significant.

GAT_00:tobcc: Dont get me wrong, I think we as humans have changed the climate, but.. we are looking at data from ~100 years, the world is 6 billion years old (or 4000 if that is your thing). It is still a really small sample size.

Which is why I said versus the 20th century average.

First rule of climate skepticism: look at the wrong scale.

The basic point is this: humans have, for the first time in history, become numerous enough and polluting enough to alter the climate on a global scale, thus passing from the Holocene (or recent period) to the Anthropocene. In other words, since we started to burn fossil fuels while doubling our population every generation or so, we've been wrecking the place.

6,000,000,000 years is not the time scale on which to prove or refute this point. Nors is 50,000,000 years. The proper time scale to look at for anthropogenic climate change is recent history.

Take the hockey stick, no, not that hockey stick, the other hockey stck. Human population was under a few hundred million until modern times. It only began to rise in the last few centuries. Meanwhile, most of the carbon humans put into the atmosphere has been put into the atmosphere since 1755, when coal-burning on an industrial scale first began in England.

In 1845, the USA was still getting most of its heat and power from wood, which is carbon neutral because the carbon put into the atmosphere by burning is sucked back out by growing the replacement wood.

You can't destroy the world by burning wood. You can't destroy the world by lighting lamps with whale oil.

But you can destroy the environment we have evolved in by releasing millions of years of fossil sunshine all at once. And by making concrete by burning limestone. And by deforesting vast areas of tropical and boreal forest.

The proper time scale to study if you want to prove that humans are disrupting the atmosphere, oceans, soils, and biomass of the Earth? Try the mid-nineteenth century to now. Oh wait, the greenhouse theory is older than that! And scientists were already convinced that the world was warming by then! And we've got global climate records dating back to then!

My, this is a fine how-do-ye-do isn't it?

Your 6,000,000,000 years (or 6,000) is the wrong "population" for your "sample size" even if the idea of "sample size" was relevant to this type of problem. But it isn't. And the population that is relevant is pushing 7.5 billion--in 1800 it was only 1 billion. That might have been sustainable if only we'd stuck to burning wood but there's a lot of reasons to suspect that even one billion people living above their means the way us Westerners do means doom unless we get our act together. And it won't be taxes that save us. It will be finding non-destructive, sustainable ways to create an economy that won't cost us the world.

The more of a "consensus" you have, the more of these anonymous scientists belong to it -- and the more likely that the sample of those scientists that sees a grant request for a project that threatens this "consensus" will have a personal interest in rejecting funding for such a grant. The result is a vicious circle with no regulation mechanism.

----------

The first time I heard this ridiculous argument (that scientists make stuff up to get money) I heard it from a morbidly obese drug addict on the radio."

WTF? Where did you find what in anything I posted that even remotely sounds like, "scientists make stuff up to get money"? I was critiquing the current peer review process, with an eye to the fact that scientists -- all scientists, not just those in one camp or another (and yes, there are camps) -- are human, have personal interests and motivations and reputations to protect, and are not beyond reproach.

But now that you mention it, at the risk of sounding like a "morbidly obese drug addict", yes - scientists sometimes DO makestuffuptogetmoney (and recognition, etc.).

Which is why it's important to acknowledge that while science is a noble pursuit, scientists are not always noble people. The practical scientific process for gaining, vetting, reconciling and disseminating knowledge MUST take this into account if the integrity of the institution of science is to be maintained. In climate change and any other consensus-driven area of research, sufficient protections against unchecked development of institutional confirmation bias do not exist today. In other words, the framework on which Phil Plait bases his gloating and smug ridicule is significantly flawed.

Denying Climate change is about as stupid as denying that the sun rises.

That said. I'm pretty damn dubious about the Humancentric part of it. But hey, I keep an open mind.

The problem I have with this "if it's group think it must be RIGHT" mentality.

To whit, I fall back on how the anthropological community celebrated Margaret Mead and how everyone that disagreed with her was ostracized as an unscientific wacko.

If you didn't agree with her... you were labeled a kook and a fool... in much the way that scientists today seem super eager to do to anyone that doesn't agree with human caused climate change.

On Margaret Mead's "Coming of Age in Samoa", Dr. Martin Orans, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, opens his book "Not Even Wrong" (Harvard University Press, 1983), thusly;

"Occasionally a message carried by the mediafinds an audience so eager to receive it that itis willing to suspend all critical judgment andadopt the message as its own. So it was withMargaret Mead's celebrated 'Coming of Age inSamoa.'"

That right there pretty much sums up the same thing I notice about Climate change.That we have this overly receptive audience that just wants to lap up the idea that humans are the be all and end all of the climate change issue and that people are suspending critical judgement.

Even today ... after her work was proven to be bunk... and that the girls she interviewed for her Saoma work admitted they'd fed her a pack of lies because they simply told her what she wanted to hear... even today there are still people in the anthropological community that continue to teach her findings as gospel truth.

Scientific groups and people are made up of human beings, and human beings have a history of playing favorites with pet theories and ignoring evidence unless it fits their agenda.

What it means is, yes. Just a coincidence that the only sites that picked this up are the same sites that promote the idea the President is illegitimate, the UN is trying to take over the world, the world cup soccer ball looks suspiciously like the Obama logo, and every other dumb ass conspiracy they can come up with so idiots like you will keep reading and propping up their business. I wonder how many of those you believe. Maybe all of them. You know what's really going on, don't you worry. You're onto the rest of us oops I said too much!

chuckufarlie:You pretend to be some sort of scientist. That is the game you are playing.

Again, ha. Now, back to the discussion, please tell the world why past data is unsuitable for climate models, by stating how the data fundamentally poisons the models, and how this data's uncertainty can never be built in.

Modeling is what you do when you want to see if going on with real experimentation is worthwhile. It is not proof of anything but proof of concept. If you want to trash the world economy over that, go ahead.

Your ignorance is showing again. If you cannot bother to even so much as open Wikipedia on the subject of data modeling, let alone climate modeling, then what weight should anyone give your still unfounded concerns?

Proxies that have a margin of error that is greater than the actual change of temperature makes for bad science.

And this cannot be introduced into the models because? Again, do your homework.

hypnoticus ceratophrys:Showing chuckufarlie/nicksteel/etc data is about as productive as shouting at that old handicapped fellow down by the interstate on-ramp waving the Jesus-saves-the-end-is-near-repent!! sign at passing traffic.

chuckufarlie: There is my version of the truth and then there is yours.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel): The truth will set you free. This entire scam [climate change] is about organizing one global governing body. It is about dismantling the United States. And incredibly naive people who live in the USA are trying to help overthrow our government and our economy.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel): The facts speak for themselves. Their true passion is one global government. Global warming is their tool to achieve it.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel): They want a new world order, the elimination of democracy and the elimination of industry. They want to take your money and mine and give it to the poor nations of the world.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel): Make a list of the big organizations that support your movement [climate change] and see how many of them also want to destroy democracy. How many want to set up a global government.

chuckufarlie: It is their attempt to socialize the planet by redistributing the wealth.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel): Most people who believe in global warming will not be happy about this. Those idiots want to dismantle the industrial world so we can all live in tents.

chuckufarlie: PEOPLE who was to reduce pollution do not want to destroy the economy. However, the IPCC certainly wants to destroy the US economy.

Showing chuckufarlie/nicksteel/etc data is about as productive as shouting at that old handicapped fellow down by the interstate on-ramp waving the Jesus-saves-the-end-is-near-repent!! sign at passing traffic.

chuckufarlie:There is my version of the truth and then there is yours.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel):The truth will set you free. This entire scam [climate change] is about organizing one global governing body. It is about dismantling the United States. And incredibly naive people who live in the USA are trying to help overthrow our government and our economy.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel):The facts speak for themselves. Their true passion is one global government. Global warming is their tool to achieve it.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel):They want a new world order, the elimination of democracy and the elimination of industry. They want to take your money and mine and give it to the poor nations of the world.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel):Make a list of the big organizations that support your movement [climate change] and see how many of them also want to destroy democracy. How many want to set up a global government.

chuckufarlie:It is their attempt to socialize the planet by redistributing the wealth.

chuckufarlie(nicksteel):Most people who believe in global warming will not be happy about this. Those idiots want to dismantle the industrial world so we can all live in tents.

chuckufarlie:PEOPLE who was to reduce pollution do not want to destroy the economy. However, the IPCC certainly wants to destroy the US economy.

chuckufarlie:Keizer_Ghidorah: chuckufarlie: Keizer_Ghidorah: You know, natural or man-made, maybe we could come up with ways to reduce the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere and ways to remove the excess already there, instead of screaming and flinging blame everywhere.

You know, just in case. Wouldn't want our only home in the universe to go to shiat.

The IPCC has a solution. They want to close down all of the industry in the Western World and distribute it to the developing countries. And they have identified India and China are developing countries. Does that sound like good planning to you?

Well, here's an idea: come up with SOME OTHER SOLUTIONS! You don't abandon the entire concept because one solution is obviously stupid.

Any solution to a worldwide problem has to be addressed at a worldwide level. If one or two countries tries to do something, it would be pointless. You might as well try draining the ocean with a one gallon bucket.

Still better than nothing. And after the first couple of countries does it and show that it works, more might follow. Hell, America likes to crow about how awesome and advanced we are and how the world should be like us, let's lead by example and implement some CO2-reducing strategies.

Oh, wait, they would cost money to do, and no one wants to spend money to keep our home clean.

chuckufarlie:So you are saying that a paper debunked comments made originally by the IPCC. That is interesting.

The paper deflates over-inflated concerns on your part. If the IPCC wrung its hands over old climate data, then, yea, fark hem. What, you think I should kiss the butt of any group instead of paying attention to numerous studies and being able to view, measure and model data myself?

Here's a challenge to you. Get the temperature data that the Berkeley group has, and show how it cannot be used to model the data as presented in their publications. In other words Specifically by naming actual data points and model parameters tell us where they are going wrong.

If you cannot do that, and all you have is some vague unfounded opinion, then what are YOU doing here?

Dusk-You-n-Me:chuckufarlie: There is no reason to believe that the change in temperature is going to increase.

Sure there is. CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere a long, long time. That's the kicker here.

That 0.8 degree C increase is a response from what we were doing 50 to 100 years ago. What we see in the first half of this century will be a response to what we've done the last 50 years. What we do in the first half of this century will determine what we see in the latter half of this century. Even if we were to stop all emissions today, the temperature will still increase for the next few decades, because of the lagging effect of emissions.

We're already set to blow past the 2 degree C marker. Scientists now consider that too high to be safe and too low to be possible.

The real threat is when the earth takes over for us. When the Siberian permafrost melts it will release methane, warming the planet, further melting the permafrost, releasing more methane, and so on. When white sea ice (which reflects energy) melts and turns into blue water (which absorbs energy), this will also heat up the planet, further melting ice, further warming the planet, and so on.

If these positive feedback loops are set in motion emissions won't matter anymore. There will be nothing we can do to stop the warming. The planet will have taken over for us, and it will be out of our hands completely

That is all a bunch of crap from the people who want us to believe this con is real. There is no evidence that we are about to blow past anything. That is just pure nonsense that people who want to believe accept without looking at the evidence.

Oh wait, there is no evidence, is there?!

The Vostok Ice Core samples tell real scientists that an increase in CO2 has always followed an increase in temperature. Can you prove that this has changed? Can you show me scientific data that shows that this current increase in temperature started with an increase in CO2? NOPE. You cannot do so and neither can anybody else.

The term "consensus science" will often be appealed to regarding arguments about climate change to bolster an assertion. This is a form of "argument from authority." Consensus, however, is a political notion, not a scientific notion. As I testified to the Inter-Academy Council in June 2010, wrote in Nature that same year (Christy 2010), and documented in my written House Testimony last year (House Space, Science and Technology, 31 Mar 2011) the IPCC and other similar Assessments do not represent for me a consensus of much more than the consensus of those selected to agree with a particular consensus. The content of these climate reports is actually under the control of a relatively small number of individuals - I often refer to them as the "climate establishment" - who through the years, in my opinion, came to act as gatekeepers of scientific opinion and information, rather than brokers. The voices of those of us who object to various statements and emphases in these assessments are by-in-large dismissed rather than accommodated. This establishment includes the same individuals who become the "experts" called on to promote IPCC claims in government reports such as the endangerment finding by the Environmental Protection Agency. As outlined in my House Testimony, these "experts" become the authors and evaluators of their own research relative to research which challenges their work. But with the luxury of havingthe "last word" as "expert" authors of the reports, alternative views vanish.

I've often stated that climate science is a "murky" science. We do not have laboratory methods of testing our hypotheses as many other sciences do. As a result what passes for science includes, opinion, arguments-from-authority, dramatic press releases, and fuzzy notions of consensus generated by preselected groups. This is not science.

John R. Christy, PhDAlabama State ClimatologistThe University of Alabama in HuntsvilleHouse Energy and Power Subcommittee20 September 2012

We don't know for certain (of course), but if we continue on this trend the latter half of this century is going to be very bad for us, and life in general.

Anything close to a 4 degrees C increase has been described as "hell on earth".

Desertification, water shortages, agricultural disruptions, rising sea levels, vanishing coral, tropical forest die-offs, mass species extinctions, oh my. Kevin Anderson, one of the lead scientists involved, was moved to say that "a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable." Link

thisbut also toss in the, peer reviewed doesnt mean unbiased or factual. Just means that your peers agree with you. And wont be harmed professionally if 100 years later they are proved wrong.

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement." 1894 - Michelson commenting on Lord KelvinPretty much all the peers were pretty certain that there was nothing new to learn. LOL

LinkLinkAll of scientific history is filled with theories which were later proven to be false.

Greenhouse Effect - little chance that it will be disprovedAnthropomorphic climate change - could be disproved in 20-2000 years by looking at the historical weather records.

What is likely to happen in the next 2000 years? warmth followed by ice age.Strange that every glacial period is preceded by spike in warming and co2, follow by ICE.I am not sure that our current warming is anything other than more of the same.

In the end, it doesnt matter what the cause of the warming is.The effect on human suffering is exactly the same.And anyone who thinks that we can just reduce CO2 is a bit silly.None of the accords have required India and China to slash their emissions by 50%.Strange, India and China continue to greatly increase their emissions each year, more than offsetting the rest of the world's reductions.

so, we wont do anything other than damage control and we would be better off continuing to think and plan that way.

omeganuepsilon:Dusk-You-n-Me: omeganuepsilon: To be fair, we're still within tolerance of that +/- 1 C, so your pics are...pointless.

Now this is a fair observation, with just those two slides presented. It's not pointless in response to the post I was replying too. So there's that.

That was all I meant, why I phrased it that way. That was all.

I'm a bit of a skeptic, Not at the warming so much, but that it's not natural. Not saying either way, but there is a possibility that it's coincidental with a warming after an ice age. My only other post in this thread was asking about the margin of error of temp proxies in things like ice cores.

I'm not waving any armchair doctorates or anything. With the argument's highly publicized and politicized "findings", I'm simply not a Believer either way as are most of the Politard Fark Brigade.

Really I just like to poke at some of the things put forth as proof/arguments, in any given topic on fark. Glad you saw it for what it was.

Ambitwistor: A real skeptic would examine the evidence and the body of existing knowledge.

No. A real skeptic may state doubts, but is not committed to getting a degree in the sciences needed to be convinced. Honestly, that's what it would take. If you're an accountant, garbage man, medical doctor, whatever, you're allowed to be a skeptic that does not have the time nor the means to really study the details.

For example, what are your professional credentials that we should take your analysis of all of the facts as the only possible outcome? Pretend for a second that claims of such thing carry any weight on the internet, and that people aren't argumentative butthooks who rely heavily on faith(Welcome to Fark!).....

So, what you're saying is you don't put much weight in expert opinion, but you can't be bothered to learn enough about it yourself to tell us why?

You're allowed to be a skeptic, but skepticism follows facts. It doesn't just say "that's all too complicated for me, so I'm going with my gut".

jigger:TabASlotB: So the entire climate science community is in on the scam then? From every relevant research institution? In governmental research groups that don't have to compete for funding, too? In countries around the world? At some point "it's all a scam to keep grant money flowing" collapses under the size of the supposed conspiracy. Not to mention that fabricating data with public monies is career suicide when it's discovered and probably actionable fraud...

As a young scientist, I can make my bones proving the graybeards wrong about something. Why wouldn't I?

It's not a conspiracy, but funding panels and peer review can be very political. I didn't say it's all a scam, but just keeping the grants flowing takes more than just being a good scientist. There is a bit of a political edge to it. I don't mean Dems and Repubs. I mean, basic stupid soap opera backstabbing shiat.

And no rational person is arguing that climate science (or any other field with intelligent peoples, clashing egos and limited resources) is purely virtuous. But assertions of wide-spread fraud--which are common, even on Fark--simply don't hold water. It's insulting to the broader science community (of which I am a part) to see jackasses continuously impugn the ethics and motives of a broad set of people because they have the audacity to present their research and some of its implications. Naturally, some of the scientists go overboard, some are complete arrogant pricks, some are inept at communication with the public, some have made glaring scientific mistakes; but the entire field is subject to a well-funded disinformation campaign.

It's not a coincidence that many of the voices of dissent, particularly those associated with the George C. Marshall Institute, have histories denying well-established facts about acid rain, DDT, ozone depletion, tobacco cancer risks and second-hand smoke. There are a small number of legitimate scientists that have parlayed their credibility into lucrative careers spreading willful disinformation. In the words of a now-infamous 1969 memo from tobacco company executive: "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." Some of the very same people working on those tobacco campaigns have been fighting climate scientists for decades.

So, feel free to point out the political bullshiat that can hamper good climate science and climate policy. Shine the light of day on it and it can improve. But you should also acknowledge the reality that this group has been subject to political bullshiat for quite some time, and the thought leaders on the dissenting side are rarely publicly held to the standards of political/ideological purity that seems to be constantly demanded from climate researchers.

turnerdude69:whatshisname: turnerdude69: Just because most scientists believe something now does not make them correct...This seems to be the best argument here...

No, that seems like a steaming pile of derp.

If most scientists understand and acknowledge something it's almost certainly correct. There may be modifications to be made and future advances in thinking, but it's not like they're all entirely wrong.

whatshisname: turnerdude69: Just because most scientists believe something now does not make them correct...This seems to be the best argument here...

No, that seems like a steaming pile of derp.

If most scientists understand and acknowledge something it's almost certainly correct. There may be modifications to be made and future advances in thinking, but it's not like they're all entirely wrong.

Really?? Cause CERN has already called Einsteins theory of relativity to be questioned...Turns out there are things like neutrinos that are faster than the speed of light... So even things like E=mc2 might not be fact...

Really?? Cause CERN has already called Einsteins theory of relativity to be questioned...Turns out there are things like neutrinos that are faster than the speed of light... So even things like E=mc2 might not be fact...

1. Find a naturally occurring event and tell people it is man made.2. Get control of the periodicals dedicated to the area of science (as the CRU admitted)3. Tell people it must be real because of all of the articles written about it.4. Rake in lots of money selling things like carbon credits.

You're not a skeptic. A real skeptic would examine the evidence and the body of existing knowledge. "But everybody could be wrong!" is intellectual laziness masquerading as skepticism. You have no idea what the evidence is supporting our current theories of the causes of glacial cycles, or how the temperature record is constructed, let alone how good or bad they are.

Pocket Ninja:Journey with me, subby, back to the early 1600s. You remember studying the 1600s, right? It was a great time of science and learning, but it it was also a great time of scientific misunderstanding. The best of times and the worst of times, if you want to cite a book that's about to be a very, very big Christmas movie. If you're into that sort of gay musical thing, I mean. I'm certainly not, but whatever floats your boat.

But anyway, I distract myself. My point is that, back in the 1600s, everybody -- and I do mean everybody, every peasant and every scientist and every priest, every-freakin'-body--believed in something called Heliocentrism. Which basically was the belief that everything rotated around the sun. No, wait, that's the way it really is. It's the belief that everything rotates around the earth.

No, wait, I was right the first time. Heliocentrism is the belief that everything rotates around the sun , but it's not what everybody believed. Everybody believed that second thing I wrote, about stuff orbiting earth. I don't know what they called it. Earth-centrism maybe. Or Terra-centrism, scientists like using the word "Terra" instead of "Earth" because it's Latin and sounds fancier. But, so, everybody believed in Terra-centrism, and then along comes this guy named Galileo, had the gumption, the guts, the stones to stand up to the world and say NO. The universe is HELIOCENTRIC. Everything orbits the SUN, not the other way around!

Well, as you might imagine, people were pissed off. Nobody likes their entire universe being questioned. Galileo (his friends called him Leo) was imprisoned in his own house, which doesn't sound to bad until you realize they didn't have electricity back then. No TV, no radio, no internet. Imagine that. He was imprisoned for years. But he stuck to his guns. And, eventually, everybody realized that he was right, after all. The sun IS at the center of the universe.

So think about it. If you were to take your fancy little pie chart and publish it back in the 1600s, what would it look like? The red sliver, which represents plucky ol' Leo, would barely be there at all. And the massive black chunk would represent everybody else who thought he was wrong. AND HE WASN'T WRONG. So what's that tell?

Remember -- being correct means having the courage to stand up to the world when you know you're in the right. It means being the lone voice in a tempest, the single drop in an ocean. Learn from Leo, who was immortalized centuries later in Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which tells the story of his struggle to shine truth into the world. I find him absolutely inspiring..

Farking Canuck:SevenizGud: cameroncrazy1984: So, 8,000+ stations for 10 years proves that the globe hasn't been warming for the past 100-150?

Another tard who can't distinguish between "never warmed" and "currently warming".

You take 10 years out of a system that has been proven to not show clear trends for periods less than 30 years and you call other people 'tards'??

This has literally been pointed out to you over a hundred times but you are too stupid to understand ... your sample size is too small to be relevant. It causes your signal to noise ratio to be too low to get a clear trend.

The following animation explains the difference between how you see data and how intelligent people see data:[www.skepticalscience.com image 850x578]

What is kind of intriguing about the flat-ear "skeptics" chosen data, is that if you overlay the 2001-2009 global economic crisis (and accompanying drop in industrial capacity, and carbon output) on top of theiir data, it answers the question of "what would happen if you could dial back global CO2 output significantly, even for a couple of years?"

I'm not sure they quite intended it that way, but...

/what was there about those years, anyway? like, from Jan '01 to Jan '09? It's as if there was some damper on the entire free-market system.... weird, huh?

You know, the night manager at your local Wal Mart is responsible for millions of dollars worth of payroll, infrastructure, and inventory. This does not mean that the night manager at your local Walmart is a millionaire.

We hear stories sometimes of million-dollar grants to scientfic labs, and some people assume that they're fabulously wealthy.

My experience? The PI would bend heaven and earth to keep the best students, and often fail.

"Science bling" is a red flag saying "I don't know what the fark I'm talking about, but by gum, I'm going to comment in this thread!"

turnerdude69:I have no idea why the Earth has been warming since the last ice age...

It isn't warming since the last ice age, as I pointed out above. It warmed out of the last ice age some time ago, and has been slowly cooling since.

And neither do any of you...

The warming and cooling in the ice age cycles is due to well-known variations in Earth's orbit modulating the average, spatial, and seasonal patterns of insolation, which in turn affect continental ice growth and decay in the high latitudes.

So stop pretending the tiny bit of information we do have can lead to such grand conclusions as we are the reason for it. As if we stopped what we are doing so would global warming.......

We know this. That is irrelevant to the question of what's causing the change now. Try to spend some time learning why scientists believe humans are causing the present warming before tossing out non sequiturs.

If indeed it does kill off mankind years from now so what? That's how nature corrects itself.

Gee, I can't imagine why people don't take your argument seriously.

Humanity has an interest in preserving itself. The historical observation that other species have gone extinct in the past is not a normative argument for allowing our species to do so.

Are you skeptical about whether vaccines really don't cause autism too? I mean, autism rates have gone up, and vaccination rates have gone up. There are some scientists who think that vaccines cause autism. I'm just asking questions.

It's been a while since I really checked up on this one, and not sure if you're being sarcastic, but:

The original study "linking" Autism and the MMR vaccine had a sample size of 12 children and dodgy methodology. Even then the study didn't find a link between the vaccine and Autism but a link between a bowel condition in children who had autism who were vaccinated. Of the 12 children in the study 5 had known developmental problems before receiving the vaccine and three never even had autism.

The big question is why parents latched onto this rather questionable study rather than the multitudes of far sounder studies on diet, obesity, exercise, smoking, alcoholism or any other factors that the parents can change that would benefit their children. Hell - when Jamie Oliver tried getting kids to eat vegetables, parents were out protesting and smuggling kids burgers and fries. Parents ignore a vast array of medical knowledge, or even fight it on a regular basis - why on earth did they have to latch onto this one rather than a study on how kids eating diets low in artificial additives and processed foods have better attention spans.

Most studies on the link between autism and the vaccine also relate to this bowel condition and not to a causative link, and they typically use extremely small sample sizes of a few dozen kids.

There have been several HUGE studies done on the link between autism and the MMR vaccine. IIRC the Netherlands did a study looking at every child vaccinated in the entire population over a 30 year period and found no link. The Japanese did a similar study comparing rates before and after they switched vaccine methods and found autism rates went up (when they stopped using MMR) but attributed this to improved diagnosis rather than actual increased rates.

What I get from that graph is that temperatures fell sharply from 1940 to 1950. Therefore, I must conclude that the rise of Nazism and/or global warfare can reduce the temperature anomaly significantly. I'd wager that industrialism was pretty high during that time as most of the world was busy building tanks, ships, planes, guns, bombs, testing nukes, etc, all things that put a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere.

I propose we reanimate Hitler (he's not really dead, you know) and pick a fight with Iran, Syria, Lybia, Russia and whoever else might want to fight for a bit. It should only take about 40 years of global war to return to pre 1900 temperatures.

ChopperCharles:Most don't deny that the climate is getting warmer. The issue is what the cause is. The debate is whether CO2 causes global warming, or whether CO2 increase in the atmosphere FOLLOWS global warming. Water stores CO2. The solubility of CO2 in water increases as temperature decreases. So as the oceans warm, they release CO2.

PLENTY of the trolls around here deny that the climate is getting warmer. They come in here with their little graphs that show 1998-2008 and a line with a very slightly negative slope and say LOOK YOU'RE IDIOTS, before we chase them away with a can of Raid.

CO2 is far and away the best fit of all the possible forcings. According to the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team (the once-denialist group that became convinced when they did their study):

"The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect - extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don't prove causality and they shouldn't end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. "

Natural cycles in the earth's orbit around the sun, and natural cycles in sun radiation output are much more plausible to many than a man-made greenhouse effect.

Both are ENTIRELY measurable, and both COMPLETELY fail to explain the observed warming.

For instance, the Berkely Earth Surface Temperature team found that, over the past 250 years, the contribution of the sun to temperature forcing has been "consistent with zero".

Regardless, the Earth is in a much, much cooler state than it has been in the past. And a much, much warmer state as well. I'd rather a temperature increase across the globe than a decrease. Subtropical regions are much nicer to live in than say, arctic ice age conditions...

Just because you like being warm doesn't mean it's what's best to keep the planet habitable by human beings.

No, that's a fake debate invented by skeptics. CO2 has followed global warming in the glacial cycles, as predicted; those same glacial cycles require this CO2-induced greenhouse feedback to explain the amplitude of the cycles. The same greenhouse effect that is now operating. At the present time, CO2 is causing global warming and overriding the glacial cycle.

Water stores CO2. The solubility of CO2 in water increases as temperature decreases. So as the oceans warm, they release CO2.

This is true and relevant to the glacial cycles. But this ocean solubility pump is too small to fully explain either the CO2 changes in the glacial cycles, or the current CO2 changes. And there are many other independent lines of evidence (about six, last I counted) conclusively linking the present CO2 increase to humans.

Natural cycles in the earth's orbit around the sun, and natural cycles in sun radiation output are much more plausible to many than a man-made greenhouse effect.

Only if you're totally ignorant, as you appear to be. Orbital cycles are of the wrong phase, magnitude, and even sign to explain the current warming. And solar output observably has not had a significant increase over the period of modern warming. (It had some contribution to the warming in the early 20th century.)

Regardless, the Earth is in a much, much cooler state than it has been in the past. And a much, much warmer state as well. I'd rather a temperature increase across the globe than a decrease. Subtropical regions are much nicer to live in than say, arctic ice age conditions...

If the next ice age were due in a century, that might be relevant, but it's not. The present choice isn't between global warming or an ice age. Long term, it might be, but if you were honestly concerned about that, you'd be advocating for using up a fraction of our fossil fuels slowly to stabilize temperatures when they're needed, rather than using them all up now and overshooting, when they're not.

spmkk:The more of a "consensus" you have, the more of these anonymous scientists belong to it -- and the more likely that the sample of those scientists that sees a grant request for a project that threatens this "consensus" will have a personal interest in rejecting funding for such a grant.

This has little to do with how grants are actually written. Nobody writes "I'm going to disprove global warming!" in their proposals. Likewise, nobody writes "I'm going to prove global warming!". In fact, anybody who wrote either of those things should get their proposals rejected, because it's unscientific to assume your conclusion.

Instead, people write "I intend to quantify the fractional contribution of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to changes in global temperature, and here's my new and improved method for doing so". That is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, and well within the scope of an RFP (e.g., on climate variability). Regardless of whether you think the PDO is a major or minor contributor, it's an advance on science to better study the modes of climate variability (which is why there are always calls for this kind of work), and if you have a new method for doing it, that's exactly what the program officer is looking for.

The more of a "consensus" you have, the more of these anonymous scientists belong to it -- and the more likely that the sample of those scientists that sees a grant request for a project that threatens this "consensus" will have a personal interest in rejecting funding for such a grant. The result is a vicious circle with no regulation mechanism.

----------

The first time I heard this ridiculous argument (that scientists make stuff up to get money) I heard it from a morbidly obese drug addict on the radio.

jigger:whizbangthedirtfarmer: My neocon friend, who, at times, I barely resist slapping in the back of the head, is convinced that scientists are making up global warming so they can get their sweet, sweet hands on some of that grant money. He apparently believes that grant money comes in massive blocks and that a scientist uses it not for research, but to buy himself nice things. He told me once that he wanted to be a scientist so he could use the grant money to buy himself a bigger house.

If academic scientists don't get outside funding, they eventually lose their jobs. No, they're not swimming in money (well, some are through patents) but they get nothing, good day sir, if their funding dries up. Oh, and science funding and publishing can be quite political. Just sayin'.

So the entire climate science community is in on the scam then? From every relevant research institution? In governmental research groups that don't have to compete for funding, too? In countries around the world? At some point "it's all a scam to keep grant money flowing" collapses under the size of the supposed conspiracy. Not to mention that fabricating data with public monies is career suicide when it's discovered and probably actionable fraud...

As a young scientist, I can make my bones proving the graybeards wrong about something. Why wouldn't I?

Geology might not have anything to do with the current climate but it is a window into the past....And there is pretty clear evidence that the Earth has went through many Ice ages and tropical periods..all without the help of man...

And there were forest fires millions of years before humans showed up.

Look at the above chart and ask yourself "what is normal for the earth?"It would appear that "hotter than now" and "more CO2 than now" are normal... but the heat doesn't seem to reflect the CO2 in the same way that the fourteen thousand copies of other peer reviewed papers would have you believe... its almost as if carbon dioxide does NOTHING to increase the atmospheric heat.

meanmutton:Here's another topic about which there is no scientific controversy but plenty of self-declared pro-science thinkers deny the science to further their own personal agenda:

In the long-term, diet and exercise alone will not bring about significant, sustained weight loss in the majority of people. You can easily find tons of qualified, long-term, peer-review studies confirming this. You can not find any qualified, long-term peer-reviewed study showing it to be false. Yet lots of people run around spouting off the idea that you can lose lots of weight and keep it off in the long term through diet and exercise as though that is fact.

Oh, and in case you're wondering: Here's the science

Here's the short of it:

In conclusion, this meta-analysis of 29 reports of long-term weight-loss maintenance indicated that weight-loss maintenance 4 or 5 y after a structured weight-loss program averages 3.0 kg or 23% of initial weight loss, representing a sustained reduction in body weight of 3.2%. Individuals who participated in a VLED program or lost ≥20 kg had a weight-loss maintenance at 4 or 5 y of 7 kg or 29% of initial weight loss, representing a sustained reduction in body weight of 6.6%. Although success in weight-loss maintenance has improved over the past decade, much more research is required to enable most individuals to sustain the lifestyle changes in physical activity and food choices necessary for successful weight maintenance.

The short of it seems to be that you misread the study because they directly say that exercise is strongly correlated with KEEPING weight off. The people regaining weight are those that revert to their post-weight-loss lifestyle. From the same study:

Our study confirmed the important role of exercise in weight-loss maintenance. Although persuasive prospective clinical trials have not been done to evaluate the long-term benefits of regular exercise for weight-loss maintenance, the 6 studies analyzed in this report and other extensive evidence (16,54-,56) emphasize the importance of exercise in long-term weight maintenance.

(You know, ignoring that the last SENTENCE of the paragraph you posted directly refutes what you said.)

Nice try. We reached peak interglacial temperatures about 8000 years ago and have been gradually cooling, on average, ever since. This also agrees with the Milankovitch orbital forcing, which is no longer in a "warming" phase.

Insatiable Jesus:Remember folks, those claiming that humans are not warming the planet are the same crowd of people that wants to stomp gays, burn atheists and return blacks to their rightful place as farm equipment.

Remember folks, those claiming humans are warming the planet are the same crowd of people that murder and rape people.

They'll either start calling you names, or accusing you of making it up.

Also, I'll say it again.

Consensus != Scientific Truth.

Also, for you AGW folks. Just what event, event or data would falsify AGW? In other words, how would we know if Global Warming stopped?

You remember a Photoshopped fake cover of TIME?

What data would falsify anthropogenic climate change? A robust collection of worldwide data over a sufficient period of time indicating a de-coupling of the expected temperature increases from the continued increases in atmospheric CO2 (& CH4, etc.) that cannot be sufficiently explained by the myriad complex downstream events of climate warming (e.g., cloud albedo changes or other negative feedbacks). If a sufficient data set is developed that cannot be adequately explained by the current models, and a non-warming model can be devised that adequately explains prior data, the theoretical frameworks of global warming will crumble.

In the meantime, we have to go with the data we have, and the best explanations of that data, not the data we can imagine having and an explanation we wish were the case.

tobcc:GAT_00: There's also this simple little fact: if you were born after February 1985, you have never experienced a month where the global temperature was below the 20th century average. One month proves nothing. One year proves nothing. 332 months in a row? Only an ignorant fool would claim temperatures are not rising when confronted with the near statistical impossibility of that fact.Dont get me wrong, I think we as humans have changed the climate, but.. we are looking at data from ~100 years, the world is 6 billion years old (or 4000 if that is your thing). It is still a really small sample size.

//dont worry, I think we need to get off fosell fuels, and have clean air too/// am a hippy (not really a dirty one though)

Um... no. We have climate data going back tens of thousands of years, in the form of tree rings, bubbles in antarctic ice, fossils...

We have written records going back several hundred years. So do yourself a favor and read up on the subject, or do the rest of us a favor and STFU.

Lucky LaRue:All that shows is scientist are worse than the average population when it comes to group-think.

You know how I know you don't know any scientist? They are the most contentious and skeptical people you will ever meet. All but the worst ones are skeptical of anything that goes against their experience, which is why they insist on peer review. The process can be brutal and not for the thin-skinned.

LOL THIS. Because I'm over 40. I remember in elementary school they taught that science showed we were going to freeze in an ice age caused by pollution. It was scientific fact, at the time.

I'm well over 40 myself and if I recall correctly even back then scientist were crying BS on global cooling. There were a few fringe scientist that were largely discrediteded based upon peer review that were claiming new ice age. The press loved it as it was sensationalism and ran with it.

I don't doubt that the climate is changing, i simply doubt that we fully understand why. We only have a few hundred years of recorded history, and even less of that directly pertains to the environment, The rest is supposition based off of geological and anthropological studies. And all of this is meant to make us think we know what is normal in the lifespan of a planet?

I cant help but feel that this is like looking at one month in the life of a 14 year old to try and determine what its entire history was and will be, as well as why.

That doesn't mean that the concerns of environmentalists are wrong, if anything they are good ideas for their own sake. It just means, in my mind, that we aren't able to truly say there is a direct correlation between some things.

"We're so self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I'm tired of this shiat. I'm tired of f-ing Earth Day. I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shiat about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ... hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ... And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn't going anywhere. WE are!

We're going away. Pack your shiat, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ... The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?"

dogfather_jr:While it's possible that the earth is warming as a direct result of man, there's no proof that the miles will come off just by putting the car on blocks in reverse.

That's actually the whole point. Anything above a 2 degrees C increase (which we're set to blow past) and there's a very real possibility that certain positive feedback loops would be set in motion. For example, the Siberian permafrost melts, releasing the methane underneath, further melting the permafrost, and so on. White sea ice (that reflects energy) melts and turns into blue sea water (that absorbs energy), further melting the ice, and so on.

If these positive feedback loops were set in motion we could end all emissions in a day and it wouldn't matter any more. The planet would continue to warm regardless of any action we took. It would be out of our hands completely.

Spanky_McFarksalot:Not that I think man-made climate change is a lie, I do think we are screwing up the climate, but...science has agreed overwhelmingly on topics and theories in the past, only to be proven wrong later.

everyone agreeing doesn't equal being right.

This observation is logically correct, but not very useful in practice. No, scientists agreeing on something does not mathematically prove its validity. But it makes it much more likely to be true. While scientific consensus is sometimes wrong, most of the time it is right. (Or at least approximately correct at the level the question is being asked at the time ... as in Newtonian vs. Einsteinian physics.)

In terms of an actual pie, that sliver is less than the part of the pie that gets squished straight down if you use the spatula to cut the pie. Once. You're not actually removing any pie from the plate; you've just made the first cut.

SlothB77:You won't get funding from the USA to write papers arguing against global warming, no matter how sound your science is. And if you need funding ...

There are 535 members of congress and the senate. All of them are facing elections at some point. 50 governors. And a president. The nations of Europe add a few thousand more elected representatives.

Every single one of those people wants to get elected.

A lot of them (like, pretty much all of the southern US, and most of the midwest) would experience an enormous economic benefit, sharply increased tax revenue, huge job growth, and large increases in property values, for producing actual scientific research which could even bring up marginally reasonable doubts about our current knowledge of climate change.

That's hundreds of billions of dollars these otherwise cut-throat, ruthless, incredibly competitive politicians are all systematically ignoring, in deference to a handful of physics wonks at NOAA and NASA. (neither of which, btw, pays nearly as well as the energy business.)

I'm just trying to wrap my head around exactly what motivates this enormous conspiracy. I hate my senators, truly I do - but I know they're actually smart, motivated, agressive people, not some stooges in a Bond film.

Endive Wombat:All I am going to add to this is that my understanding about those who question global warming is this (and let's be honest, it is a major sticking point): What is its cause and what, if anything can we do about it?

IIRC the human contribution to total yearly CO2 output is something on the order of less than one half of one percent (0.05%). Volcanoes, oceanic outgassings, cow farts/non human animal farts and rotting plant matter are the major contributors to the Earth's CO2 .

/I have not done any research on the matter and may be totally wrong about my second paragraph...I cannot remember where I heard this stuff from...CNN, Fox....???

GAT_00:See the story I linked above. The Koch Brothers paid for a study to prove that global warming wasn't real. They found that the evidence did in fact show the planet was warming beyond statistical doubt.

Yep, I had a good chuckle when that news broke.

This is very much why there is an overwhelming consensus that global warming is happening. Every metric, we currently have, supports that conclusion. If a new and valid metric could be found, it will receive funding, whether from the NSF or some other private entity.

BigBurrito:SlothB77: You won't get funding from the USA to write papers arguing against global warming, no matter how sound your science is. And if you need funding ...

Actually, if your science is sound and you have a pertinent test, you would most likely receive funding.

Most basic science research is funded by the NSF. The NSF uses peer reviews to determine allocation of funding. You send a grant request in, then that request is submitted with other grant requests to anonymous scientists in your discipline. Those anonymous scientists determine which grants are more deserving of the money. Recommendations are made and eventually the funds are rewarded. Usually to the most deserving project.

More research to prove that global warming exists is a rather low priority for funding. The consensus already exists that it does. A research area that might question that result is much more compelling to a reviewer than one that reinforces the current understanding.

The question becomes, what area of science has the best potential to disprove global warming.

See the story I linked above. The Koch Brothers paid for a study to prove that global warming wasn't real. They found that the evidence did in fact show the planet was warming beyond statistical doubt.

Relatively Obscure:Diogenes: doyner: Interesting how the vast majority of people that reject the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change are willing to believe claims made in texts that are mellinia old without any skepticism....

Diogenes:doyner: Interesting how the vast majority of people that reject the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change are willing to believe claims made in texts that are mellinia old without any skepticism....

tobcc:Dont get me wrong, I think we as humans have changed the climate, but.. we are looking at data from ~100 years, the world is 6 billion years old (or 4000 if that is your thing). It is still a really small sample size.

Of course understanding how we can reconstruct temperature data requires understanding a bit more science, therefore many will dismiss it. It is interesting that they can reconstruct CO2 levels, and dust levels as well.

tobcc:Dont get me wrong, I think we as humans have changed the climate, but.. we are looking at data from ~100 years, the world is 6 billion years old (or 4000 if that is your thing). It is still a really small sample size.